The House on Fortune Street

by Margot Livesey

  “A job?” said Dara.

  “Managerial and”—Frank grimaced—“well paid.” The news, he went on, came not from Halley but from Joyce, another counselor, who had learned from a mutual acquaintance that Halley was on the short list. “Joyce is furious. She says for Halley to do this, without consulting us, is a complete betrayal of what the center stands for. She’s drawing up a list of complaints about Halley so that she won’t be able to leave. Your name came up.” He eyed her alertly. “Have you been keeping something from me, darling?”

  “How do you mean ‘my name came up’?”

  “As someone with a complaint. Joyce didn’t give details.” He stood up and twirled neatly around. “Off to my anxiety group.”

  “Wait. Is Halley here? Is Joyce?”

  “That’s what’s so weird,” he said over his shoulder. “They both are.”

  Alone, Dara gazed at the painting above the filing cabinet, one of her mother’s, which depicted a tiger, a bear, a lion, a sheep, and other ill-assorted animals convened amid lush vegetation beside a river. On good days she often thought of the center as a Peaceable Kingdom where the seven of them, each so different, came together to make a place of calm and safety. And no two were more different than the stocky Joyce, whose main asset as a counselor was her gift for languages—she spoke Bangladeshi and Hindi—and the statuesque Halley. Frank claimed that back in the mists of time they had once been lovers, but no one seemed to know for sure. Dara had met Halley with several supposed amoretti—a tall Brazilian woman who also fenced, a man with an aquiline profile who studied pond life, a waiflike woman who made stained glass—and none of them was remotely like Joyce. One thing for the lamb and the lion to lie down together, quite another for them to copulate. Now the idea of Halley wanting to leave filled Dara with emotions too murky to grasp, but she did have a clear reaction to Joyce enlisting her as a fellow complainant: outrage. She was about to go and confront her when the phone rang.

  ALL DAY THE SCHEDULE AND VARIOUS INTERRUPTIONS MADE IT impossible for Dara to speak to Joyce alone. Finally she caught her at six o’clock, maneuvering her bicycle down the front steps. “Joyce,” she said breathlessly, “I need to talk to you.”

  Halfway down the stairs Joyce, already wearing her helmet, paused. “What about?”

  “This business. With Halley.”

  Joyce carried her bike down the remaining steps and glanced, ostentatiously, at her watch. “Okay. The Duke of York?”

  She began to push her bicycle along the pavement, and Dara, not daring to suggest that she retrieve her own bike, followed. At the pub, she bought two halves of lager and joined Joyce at the table outside where, in spite of the cool evening, she insisted on sitting. The other tables were being used by young men in suits, standing around in a comradely fashion, drinking pints and smoking.

  “What’s up?” said Joyce. To make clear how limited her time was, she did not remove her helmet. After months of surreptitious study, Dara had, at last, figured out why she found Joyce hard to talk to. It was not her low forehead, nor her smallish eyes, nor her thin lips, but rather that these features revealed so little of her thoughts or feelings. Now, beneath the shadow of her helmet, Dara detected a faint frown.

  “Frank told me,” she said cautiously, “that there’s some question about Halley.”

  “Question,” Joyce snorted. “She’s planning to leave us in the lurch.” She raised her glass and Dara noted, with surprise, that her nails were painted a deep cinnamon.

  “There’s no rule against applying for a job.”

  “There is against applying under false pretenses and keeping it secret. Halley has great gifts but she’s one of the worst administrators I’ve ever met.” Joyce enumerated various occasions on which Halley had muddled the schedule and once failed to get a grant application in on time. When she fell silent, Dara asked whether, if Halley was so inept, they wouldn’t be better off without her. Unfazed by this childish maneuver, Joyce said Halley was a brilliant fund-raiser and good with the center’s various support groups.

  “She’s fantastic with the groups,” said Dara. “Frank said you thought I had a complaint against Halley?”

  At last Joyce removed her helmet and set it on the table between them. Her fair curly hair sprang back as if it had never known confinement. “Remember,” she said, “when we had a drink last April, after running that session for volunteers? You told me that Halley had made inappropriate remarks about the Bangladeshi women.”

  Dara seldom blushed but she could feel the blood surging behind her eyes as she recalled the conversation. She and Joyce had been the only ones working that evening and had gone for a drink together at this very pub. And then, it was coming back to her, she had repeated a conversation she had had with Halley a few days earlier. She had been letting Joyce know how close she was to Halley. And look where her boasting had landed her. “Halley and I were just letting off steam,” she said. “We’ve all commented that counseling is culturally specific. It is uphill work with some of our Bangladeshi clients.”

  “Which is no excuse for denigrating them. Just because Halley’s black doesn’t mean she can’t be racist.” Joyce’s nostrils flared as she explained that several of her clients—she was the sole Bangladeshi speaker among the counselors—had been made to feel unwelcome.

  The cause of her fury might be obscure but there was no mistaking its intensity. “Well,” said Dara, “with luck she’ll be leaving soon.”

  “A woman in the midst of a racial harassment suit is unlikely to get a job at City Hall,” Joyce replied tartly.

  Dara had a sudden flash of sympathy for the men some of her clients described who ended discussions with a blow to the head, a kick to the stomach. “Joyce, surely this doesn’t need to come to court. Can’t you and Halley sit down with a mediator?” In the urgency of her plea, she reached for Joyce’s hand.

  Joyce shook her off. “This is what I’m up against. Everyone wants me to keep quiet and not do anything to upset the wonderful Halley. But I’m not going to keep quiet. I’m going to work to make things better.”

  Without waiting for Dara’s response to this speech, which she had delivered so loudly as to draw the attention of two or three of the cheerful men at nearby tables, Joyce put on her helmet, seized her bike, and pedaled vehemently into the traffic. A bus swerved to avoid her.

  FOR NEARLY A WEEK DARA REFRAINED FROM DIALING EDWARD’S number. This luxurious period of almost infinite possibilities ended abruptly when she left a message on his phone and began to wait in an entirely different way. Four days later, she had already rehearsed an excuse for a second call—a friend wanting advice about music teachers—when he phoned to ask if she was free for a drink that evening.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Dara. “It’s my turn to cook.”

  “Oh”—she heard music in the background—“how about tomorrow?”

  Reluctantly she explained she was working until nine, but it turned out that Edward was too; they settled on nine-thirty at a pub near Waterloo Station. Dara pretended to study case notes for five more minutes. Then she headed for Frank’s office.

  “Very romantic,” said Frank after she recounted her two fated meetings with Edward, “but remember Pavarotti.” At last month’s staff meeting Halley had described how the famous tenor, when asked if he thought a particular audience would like him, had replied: the question is will I like them. Dara promised to keep Pavarotti in mind. Was there still space in Frank’s anxiety group? One of her clients, a single mother in her forties, would benefit from attending.

  AT THE END OF A LONG DAY OF COUNSELING, SHE BRUSHED HER hair, put on the silver earrings she had bought in Ireland the previous summer, and bicycled to the pub. She succeeded in arriving a satisfactory ten minutes late, but among the half-dozen groups of young people and scattering of solitary older men there was no sign of Edward. She ordered a glass of white wine, sat down at a corner table, and took out her sketch pad.

  While her pencil moved ove
r the page, Dara imagined car accidents, terrorist bombs, falling objects, violent crimes. Growing up she had assumed this behavior was unique, a result of her father’s sudden disappearance. She had been both relieved and a little disappointed to discover how many people used this strategy to fend off disaster.

  The door opened and a dark-haired man came in. Dara half rose before she saw that he was with a woman. Two more men appeared, each of whom, fleetingly, looked like Edward. She began to wonder if she would recognize him. Soon after moving to London, she had arranged to meet a friend at the National Gallery. She hadn’t seen Toby for four years but, as she came into the building, she had spotted him, waiting at the foot of the stairs. She had almost reached him, was smiling, holding out a hand, when the man’s blank stare signaled her mistake. The incident would have been merely a small embarrassment, soon forgotten, if the man hadn’t, as she turned away, given a savage smirk. The real Toby had appeared a few minutes later, full of apologies, but throughout their pleasant afternoon, the stranger’s hostile behavior had stayed with Dara.

  Now she decided to wait five more minutes, long enough to finish her sketch of the elderly man playing solitaire in the corner. She was shading the folds in his jacket when Edward appeared, instantly recognizable despite his evening dress. “I’m so sorry,” he said, bending to kiss her cheek. “I had no idea we’d be doing three encores.”

  The car crashes and the bombs vanished. She was having a drink with a man she barely knew; they might not even like each other. As he returned to their table, carrying two glasses of wine, she noticed that he was still favoring his left leg and that several people in the room were watching him, perhaps trying to decide if his smart clothes meant he was famous.

  “Cheers,” he said. His eyes beneath his thick brows appeared darker than they had by the canal; otherwise he looked as she remembered, his features not exactly handsome but full of passion and intelligence. She would like to draw him someday.

  “The new conductor is such a ham,” he was saying. “I should have guessed he’d milk the applause for all it was worth. He had the audience cheering. I kept wondering what they’d think if they knew he had a tracking device in his little toe.”

  “A tracking device?”

  “He has a taste for young boys. Rumor has it that the device is part of his contract, so he can’t stray.”

  She was about to say that she had encountered men like that in her work but instead asked what they’d played. She did not want Edward to have the opportunity to offend her by displaying the kind of prurient curiosity such topics sometimes elicited.

  “Mozart, Dvorák, Shostakovich—something for everyone.”

  Dara confessed she was hopelessly unmusical. “My mother is an art teacher and my father is a keen photographer but it never occurred to either of them that I should have music lessons.”

  “You draw, though, don’t you?” He gestured at the pad on the table.

  “I remember you had a sketchbook by the canal.”

  “I did.” She had not thought he had noticed in the midst of his accident. “I take classes occasionally but I’m strictly an amateur. When I was young, my mother painted murals in restaurants. That cured me of any romantic notion of making a living as a painter.”

  She showed him the sketch she had done while waiting and the still unfinished drawing of the canal. He exclaimed at how well she had captured both scenes; she could tell that her skill surprised him. “So,” he said, “you don’t think photography has rendered drawing obsolete?”

  “That’s what my father would say, but I think photography is the opposite of seeing. When I was little he always had a camera round his neck, so he didn’t have to engage with us.”

  They exchanged the details of their families. Edward had grown up in Cardiff, the older of two sons; his father had worked his way up from being a bricklayer to running his own building company; his parents were still happily married. Dara told him about her parents and that she had moved to London partly for her job, partly to get to know her father.

  “I hope he appreciates your efforts,” said Edward. Before she could respond he added that he hadn’t yet eaten. Nor had she, and they decided to try the Thai restaurant on the corner. As they headed down the street, he asked what she’d meant on the phone when she said it was her turn to cook. She explained that she shared a house with three other people; they had dinner together once a week, and took turns cooking. She described her housemates—a journalist, an accountant, and a graphic designer—trying to make them sound interesting. In fact the house had proved a minor disappointment, providing neither close friends nor a larger social world. Edward said that sounded like a good arrangement. His own flat, near Kennington, had been chosen solely because it was on the top floor; he didn’t have to worry that he was torturing his neighbors every time he practiced.

  In the restaurant they ordered pad Thai and curry. Edward reminisced about a trip to Thailand with a girlfriend who was studying Eastern music; one day they had visited a temple in a village. “The whole of the inner courtyard was a mass of yellow flowers. Half a dozen children were watering them.”

  “It sounds beautiful,” said Dara. She recognized with pleasure a familiar milestone on the road to romance: the discussion of previous relationships. She contributed Ian, her halfhearted boyfriend of two years ago, and their trip to Amsterdam. For her the highlight had been visiting the Van Gogh Museum.

  “Did you see the field with the crows?” said Edward. “I love the way the wheat and the birds and the sky are all in motion.” He had lived in Amsterdam for six months, helping a friend start a recording studio.

  Suddenly it was late, nearly midnight, and he had to hurry to catch the tube. “Let’s do this again,” he said. He kissed her on the mouth, but decorously.

  Bicycling home through the dark streets, Dara pictured them living together in the top-floor flat, making trips to Paris and Amsterdam; perhaps she might even take music lessons. Stop it, she thought. She did like him, but so what? Forget Pavarotti. She had learned, early and often, that her feelings had little effect on the world. All that fuss about the tree in the forest, watched or unwatched, was mere wishful thinking. If a passionately concerned participant made no difference, why on earth should a detached observer?

  IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED SHE CONTINUED TO OSCILLATE between idyllic daydreams and precautionary disasters. Meanwhile at the center Joyce remained rigidly aloof. My cause is righteous, her posture signaled as she made a cup of tea, walked down the corridor, used the photocopier. As for Halley, she was unfailingly cheerful and even more colorfully dressed than usual. The general opinion was that Joyce had misunderstood one of Halley’s offhand comments. At an ad hoc meeting the other counselors decided that Frank would offer to take over Joyce’s addiction group in exchange for her doing his shift at reception. “She’s too angry,” said Frank. “We can’t expose our clients to that.”

  But the clients seemed to sense the turmoil anyway. For Dara the actual counseling had always been the most rewarding part of her job, the part where she felt most confident and competent. She knew how to put people at ease, how to mirror back their emotions, how to help them identify and resolve their rage and shame. Now client after client was hostile, cagey, rude, ungrateful. “What do you know about it?” demanded one woman, after half a dozen friendly sessions. The rest of the staff reported similar experiences. Some worm of discontent had wound its way into the core of the organization.

  Only Claire Frazer, the woman she had described to Abigail, appeared immune. She phoned Dara to say how helpful her survivors’ group was. “I used to feel so alone, but two of the women have had terrible battles with their families. They know what it’s like to have a person you love do something awful, then deny it and call you a liar.”

  “How are the panic attacks?”

  “Better. I still have them but not as often, and now that Ben knows they’re not about him, he can cope. Thanks to you, we’re managing.”
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  Which hopefully, thought Dara, was code for making love.

  Still basking in Claire’s thanks, she went to meet her next client, who was in fact one of Frank’s; he had an appointment with the chiropractor. “Millie is a handful,” he had warned, and as soon as Dara saw the sixteen-year-old slouched in the waiting room, her blue skirt barely reaching her thighs, her red T-shirt embossed with a diamond heart tight across her chest, she knew he wasn’t exaggerating. Millie had gone to the police with a torn dress and a lurid story about her virginity and her mother’s boyfriend. The subsequent lab report had shown evidence of two partners.

  “Where’s the poof?” Millie said when Dara introduced herself.

  “If you mean Frank, he had a doctor’s appointment. He passed your file on to me.”

  Dara stepped back, holding the door open. After a few seconds Millie stood up and followed. In the meeting room she flung herself down in a chair and gave the box of Kleenex on the nearby table a contemptuous shove. Dara asked her to repeat whatever she regarded as essential from the last meeting.

  “I don’t regard nothing as essential.”

  “So how are you doing?”

  “My mum won’t speak to me, Larry’s moved out, and everything’s a drag. They want me to shut up and not make a fuss. But I’ve been raped. I know my rights.”

  “Of course you have rights,” Dara said. “It is a little more complicated, though, since the lab report.”

  The girl exploded out of her chair. “You’re not my fucking mother.”

  “No, I’m not. And no one is making you talk to me. If coming here is helpful, that’s great. If it isn’t, you’re free to go.” Usually this speech had a calming effect, reminding clients that, unlike almost every other aspect of their lives, sitting in this comfortable room, talking to a sympathetic listener, was their choice.